The line was created by the UK’s biggest ad agency, Abbott Mead Vickers(now part of BBDO), for a much-lauded campaign that began in the mid-1980s and ran for at least 20 years. (It may still be running somewhere.) Other word-playful lines in the campaign included “Trump Donald,” “Pressure peers,” and “Think someone under the table.” (See Jarrett Lambert’s Pinterest board of Economist ads.)

In appropriating the “great minds” line, One Day University may have violated copyright law, but not trademark. As far as I can tell, The Economist doesn’t have trademark protection for the tagline. [UPDATE: But see comment below from Jessica, a trademark lawyer.]

Nevertheless, when a line is that distinctive, and that closelyassociatedwith a single globally recognized company (founded 1843), it seems shabby, derivative, and even larcenous when another advertiser “borrows” it.

This isn’t the first time The Economist’s famous ads have been plagiarized. Back in 2003, the British budget airline easyJetran ads with a quote from “George Smith, management trainee, aged 47”:

The Economist has complained to the advertising watchdog about Easyjet, accusing the budget airline of copying its hugely successful black-on-red advertising campaign. …

The Economist is claiming the advert breaches the copyright on its famous “management trainee” poster campaign, which ran in the mind-1980s [sic] and was voted among the top 10 posters of the century by Campaign magazine.

EasyJet may have assumed it was in the clear because it changed the verb tense and “trainee” age in the copy. One Day University, in contrast, didn’t make even the feeblest attempt at originality. It may have another think coming.

These 2013 models seem to have replaced the original Smart Fortwo, which I have chosen to pronounce “Fort Wo.”

We haven’t seen this much unning since April 2009, when KFC introduced its “UNthink” slogan to accompany the UNfried menu. Later that year, Ben Zimmer devoted an “On Language” column in the New York Times Magazine to what he called “The Age of Undoing”: he discussed social-media coinages such as “unfriend” and “unfollow” and the business world’s “unconference” and “unmarketing.” (Ben followed up with a more scholarly analysis in the Visual Thesaurus.)

The granddaddy of Un-branding—the ur-Un, you might say—was J. Walter Thompson’s positioning of 7Up as “The Uncola” in a campaign that lasted from 1968 to 1974.

November 07, 2011

Malcolm Gladwell considers the late Steve Jobs andSteve Jobs, Walter Isaacson’s new biography of the Apple co-founder, in the November 14 issue of the New Yorker:

The famous Apple “Think Different” campaign came from Jobs’s advertising team at TBWA\Chiat\Day. But it was Jobs who agonized over the slogan until it was right:

They debated the grammatical issue: If “different” was supposed to modify the verb “think,” it should be an adverb, as in “think differently.” But Jobs insisted that he wanted “different” to be used as a noun, as in “think victory” or “think beauty.” Also, it echoed colloquial use, as in “think big.” Jobs later explained. “We discussed whether it was correct before we ran it. It’s grammatical, if you think about what we’re trying to say. It’s not think the same, it’s think different. Think a little different, think a lot different, think different. ‘Think differently’ wouldn’t hit the meaning for me.”

“Thank Different” is just one vowel away from Apple’s famous “Think Different” slogan, which was the theme of the ad campaign said to be responsible for Apple’s dramatic turnaround in the late 1990s. The “Think Different” ads, created by Los Angeles agency TBWA\Chiat\Day, featured black-and-white portraits of famous 20th-century people—the Dalai Lama, Jim Henson, Martha Graham, Miles Davis, and many others. The long version of the ad, created for TV spots, called these people “the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes.”

Yoko Ono and John Lennon.

As a slogan, “Think Different” wasn’t terribly different. It riffed on two classics of the genre: Volkswagen’s “Think Small” (1960) and IBM’s “Think” (coined by Thomas J. Watson, Jr., in 1911—several years before he joined the forerunner of IBM).

May 28, 2010

It looks as though “Think” slogans are going to become a monthly feature here at Fritinancy. In March I wrote about the thought-filled campaigns of Saks Fifth Avenue, Bare Escentuals, Think Bank, and IBM; in April I looked at the Qatar Foundation and AT&T.

But the think tank hasn’t run dry.

“Think Indian,” for example, is the theme of an ad campaign launched in early 2009 by the American Indian College Fund. The slogan is supported by multiple definitions. Here’s one:

Tetley Tea has a new slogan, “Rethink Tetley Rethink Tea.” (An example of tea-rethinking: “Rethink Brunch! Always serve Tetley Tea!”) Via AdFreak, where the original post by Rebecca Cullers has mysteriously disappeared, although it’s been appropriated by other online publications. (Tsk!)

Think Gum actually makes a cognitive promise: It’s made with “brain-boosting herbal ingredients ... proven to enhance concentration & improve memory*.” The asterisk leads to this disclaimer: “These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.”

It’s only coincidental that the Think! Shoes site’s background music is the same song I featured a couple of weeks ago. But it’s probably no coincidence that Think! Shoes’ slogan— “Walk Different / Shop Different”—evokes Apple’s “Think Different.” (From the Think! brand-philosophy page: “Here in Sauwald, Upper Austria, we tend to think a little different.”) Great minds —and lesser ones, too — often do think alike.

A couple of Visual Thesaurus commenters mentioned “think” slogans I’d overlooked. In Oh God, Book 2, wrote Don H., God gives a little girl an assignment to promote his presence in the world; she comes up with “Think God.” (Nice.) And Chris S. reminded me that Taco Bell has used “Think outside the bun” as its slogan for quite some time (since 2001, in fact).

By the way, Taco Bell shares a parent company, Yum! Brands Inc., with KFC, which until recently used the slogan “Unthink,” mentioned in a previous post and in my recent Visual Thesaurus column. As of this week, KFC has unthought “Unthink.” AdAge reports that the chain’s new slogan, “the result of the combined efforts of Ogilvy, Sydney; Bartle Bogle Hegarty, London; and DraftFCB, Chicago,” is “So Good.” Not only were three international ad agencies involved in this stunningly mediocre outcome; the wisdom of the crowd was also invoked:

The tagline emerged in focus groups, when lapsed customers tasted the product and said, “It's so good.” But in addition to tapping nostalgia, it also provides an umbrella that works for promoting grilled chicken, crispy fried strips or a value meal.

May 12, 2010

My latest column for Visual Thesaurus, "The Thinkers," was published today. It expands on observations I've made here, in March and April, about the recent proliferation of think and rethink in corporate slogans. In the VT column, I've thrown KFC's "Unthink" into the mix. Access to the column is, as always, restricted to subscribers; here's an excerpt to whet your appetite:

The last time "think" made this much advertising news was in 1997, when Apple introduced its "Think Different" ads, created by the Los Angeles agency TBWA\Chiat\Day. Instead of product shots, the ads featured striking black-and-white photos of famous people — Albert Einstein, John Lennon, Martha Graham, Muhammad Ali, and others. But it was what some people saw as the ungrammaticality of the slogan that touched a nerve. The reasoning: "Different" is an adjective; ergo, it can't modify the verb "to think."

Not true, as it turns out. Looking back on the campaign from the vantage of 2006, linguist Eric Bakovic wrote in Language Log that "it's not so clear that different is supposed to be an adverb in this case." He went on:

[D]istinctions between many adjective/adverb pairs have been slowly but surely eroding in English. Different/differently is among these pairs; the OED lists different as an adjective or an adverb, in the latter case meaning the same thing as differently and with the caveat "Now only in uneducated use." I think the erosion has gone so far that the "educated/uneducated" distinction made in this OED usage point comes close to simply separating pedants from most other folks; thus, the ad campaign benefitted from the slight double meaning: Apple thinks different(ly), and (therefore) Apple is different.

What often got lost in the debate over parts of speech was Apple's bold strategy, based on image and ideation rather than product features and a sales pitch. It succeeded: 1997 marked the beginning of Apple's climb back to profitability. (It was also, not coincidentally, the year of Steve Jobs's return to the company he had co-founded.) The slogan was retired in 2002, but a hypercorrect spoof — "Think Differently" — appeared in a 2008 episode of "The Simpsons."